Cost of living claims another victim: Roosevelt Tamale Parlor

The Roosevelt Tamale Parlor, founded in 1922, has been a link to tradition in a rapidly gentrifying Mission District.

The Roosevelt Tamale Parlor, founded in 1922, has been a link to...

Since 1922, the Roosevelt Tamale Parlor has been on 24th Street near York in the Mission. Originally founded by a Dutchman who also owned what’s now the Brava Theater, the restaurant has passed through many owners and, in 2004, one controversial renovation.

But a few things have remained the same for all of those decades — the tamales, with their red gravy, reasonable prices and a deep respect for the informal Mexican cuisine for which the restaurant is known.

It’s all going to end on Sunday, Dec. 6.

Earlier this week, owners Aaron Presbrey and Barry Moore posted a sign outside of their front door announcing that they were shutting down.

More by Caille Millner

“Due to a combination of factors including personal health issues and a shrinking restaurant labor pool which has fueled unsustainable wage expectations, we have been forced to close the brick and mortar location of the Roosevelt Tamale Parlor,” read the notice.

I try to remain calm in the storm of business closures and rapid neighborhood turnover that’s San Francisco in 2015.

You can understand why — if I allowed myself to get emotional over every instance, every loss, I wouldn’t have time for anything else.

But the Roosevelt?

The Roosevelt is one of the few places I’ve been able to bring every member of my family and hear no complaints. It’s solid, it’s friendly, it’s reliable, and — this is an especially rare quality in contemporary San Francisco — the clientele is consistently diverse. Even after Moore and Presbrey tweaked the menu slightly in 2012 (mostly by paring it down), they kept the same kitchen staff, the same spirit and the same down-to-earth prices.

I live nearby, and whenever I walked by the softly glowing multicolored neon sign — with its happy promise of carnitas, elote and agua fresca within — I knew that I was home in every single way.

So I went by for one last meal this week. I wasn’t the only one, either — there was an hour-long wait for a table on Wednesday night. Despite the cold, everyone stuck it out.

When Presbrey had to start turning down new table requests around 8:30 p.m. (the kitchen closes at 9 p.m.), a young woman stood on the curb and wiped her tears. Her boyfriend put his arms around her.

I almost cried myself when Presbrey told me that he’d run out of elote tamales. The emotion was running high — longtime clients sat at their tables and wrote love letters to Moore, the chef, who wasn’t there that night.

Presbrey told me that they’d been racked with all kinds of feelings over whether they should close, and how they should tell the neighborhood.

“This was not a decision that was taken lightly,” he said. “We are very aware of the fact that the Roosevelt will probably not continue in this space as it has for so long.”

He’s right. Gentrification came later to 24th Street than it did to much of the Mission, but it’s doing its grim work with a vengeance. You know you’re in the matrix when the names of the new neighborhood businesses have nothing in common with the services offered, and it’s quite clear that Roam, Yubalance and Sous-Beurre aren’t interested in the 24th Street patrons of Low Cost Carniceria and El Chico Produce Market.

I asked Presbrey what the reason for closure was — a landlord? San Francisco’s higher-than-average minimum wage?

“It was definitely not our landlord, who’s been good to us,” he said. “And you can’t hire a kitchen staff in San Francisco for minimum wage.”

So the obvious San Francisco villains don’t apply to this particular loss, but the most insidious one does — the cost of living.

“If you want to hire a line cook, you’re talking at least $16 an hour,” Presbrey said. “I get it. Our staff members don’t want to work 15 hours a day and then commute on a train for an hour back and forth. No one wants to live like that. But the result is that the cost of living here is killing our ability to hire staff.”

And without help, Presbrey said, more and more of the work would fall on him and Moore — to the point where it simply wasn’t sustainable. “There were serious health and welfare issues for us if we continued.”

There’s no way to argue with that. But losing the Roosevelt is a big blow for San Francisco’s history and for the neighborhood around 24th Street. There’s no way to argue with that, either.

The abrupt closure meant that there was still evidence of a happier, more forward-looking time at the Roosevelt on Wednesday night. Vintage calendars advertising the parlor’s existence still hung on the walls.

These calendars, many of which feature the emblematic Aztec and Mayan imagery that’s associated with Latino art, are beloved by longtime patrons. Presbrey gave a few lucky patrons some of those calendars on Wednesday night as they shuffled out after their meals — happy to take another year of the Roosevelt’s spirit with them.